Matias »Kobolder« Piantanida

*1980 – Puerto Galván, Bahía Blanca – Argentina

Matias Kobolder’s artwork captivates viewers with intricate black-and-white designs, filled with finely detailed faces, figures, and surreal characters. Each piece is densely packed, inviting close inspection and offering something new to discover with each view. His characters, both playful and mysterious, evoke a sense of familiarity, as though connected to deep, universal symbols or ancient memories. Blending tribal-like patterns, surrealism, and cartoon-like exaggeration, Kobolder creates figures that feel mythical, as if they’re spirits or creatures from forgotten tales.

His work combines gentle curves with sharp edges, adding both softness and structure to each figure. Patterns flow and merge, creating rich textures and a unity within the chaotic composition, guiding viewers’ eyes through the artwork’s hidden pathways. By sparking curiosity and emotional responses, Kobolder’s art invites viewers into a surreal world, where intense gazes and hypnotic shapes evoke dreams and nightmares. His black-and-white palette amplifies the drama, focusing attention on contrasts and textures that challenge viewers to explore their own emotions.

I’m an Argentinian Italian self-taught illustrator living in Düsseldorf, Germany. 

My relationship with drawing dates back to when I was 3 years old. Somehow, drawing was always behind everything I did. In 2005, I began to study at the School of Visual Arts of Bahia Blanca (ESAV) and also I was selected as an exhibitor at the National Art Biennial of the City Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC, Bahia Blanca, Argentina). This year I continued taking classes and actively participating in art events in my city: Arts Fairs, Photography exhibitions, etc. I was forced to drop out of art School in the same year, and with that began a long period of creative block that lasted about 13 years. 

2017, I decided to move to Germany looking for a place where everything were new (people, language, places, etc) and without any plan; one day I bought some sheets of papers and pencils and I start again to draw, and here I am. My choice when I draw is to use ink, pencil most of the time black and white. But also I enjoy and explore photography, mixing drawings with photos and digital art. 

Drawing is a whole process, it is in permanent change, going through moments, ideas, etc. I could say that today my creative process, the act of drawing, begins, in most cases, with me sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper and drawing blindly. Many times I explain that what I do is simply a matter of opening a small door in my forehead where all these characters–that have been trapped in my head for years–come out and push each other out and turning onto the paper, without order, without meaning, just for the searching for freedom. Many times some people see my drawings and ask me: Why do they have big eyes? What is the reason for these drawings? What does this all means? Why only in black and white and not in colour? And I could say, that is exactly what I like about my drawings, the fact that you stare for a while, that the person who looks at them tries to give it their own meaning, that the person who admires the drawing realizes that they’ve spent a while in front of the picture loosing himself in the characters and imagining what is happening, and become part of it, because the observer completes the drawing by giving it his own meaning, that works for me, because I did something that make the person who observe the drawing ask himself things, enjoy himself at the same time and escape from reality for a moment.